A business consultant wants a court to force YouTube and owner Google to unmask a cyber cipher who posted what she says are unauthorized videos of her and online comments that hurt her reputation.

Carla Franklin, a former model and actress turned MBA, said in a legal petition filed Monday that she believes a Google user or users impugned her sexual mores in comments made under pseudonyms on a Columbia Business School website. Franklin says someone also posted unauthorized YouTube clips of her appearing in a small-budget independent movie.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. said in a statement that it doesn't discuss individual cases to protect users' privacy, but it follows applicable laws.

The postings caused Franklin "personal humiliation" and hurt her professional prospects as she was job-hunting after graduating from the Ivy League business school in 2009, her legal papers say.

The video clips were innocuous but unauthorized, and she found it creepy that someone had unearthed the film and posted pieces in an apparent effort to make her uncomfortable, her lawyer, David M. Fish, said Tuesday.

Anonymity is a cherished and staunchly defended refuge for many Internet users. But a growing number of people and businesses have tried to force blogs, websites and other online entities to disclose who's trashing them, and some have succeeded.

In one case that grabbed headlines, Vogue cover model Liskula Cohen successfully sued Google in a state court in Manhattan last year to get the name of a blogger who had published comments about Cohen's hygiene and sexual habits.

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled on Tuesday against New York City in its long-running dispute with India and Mongolia over whether they owe about $47 million in taxes on property that houses staff assigned to consulates and United Nations missions.

The demands by the city that hosts the United Nations headquarters for property taxes from several foreign governments had become an irritant in diplomatic relations, according to a U.S. Department of State notice cited by the three-judge panel.

The June 2009 notice granted an exemption from property taxes on property owned by foreign governments and used to accommodate their personnel in the United States. The City of New York argued the properties should be taxable, despite the department's order under the Foreign Missions Act.

A man who has been trying for decades to take back his guilty plea in a notorious child molestation case won a huge moral victory Monday when a federal appeals court encouraged prosecutors to reopen their investigation.

Although the judges on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied Jesse Friedman's request to withdraw his plea, saying there was no legal basis to allow that, the panel criticized interrogation techniques by investigators in the 1988 case and actions by prosecutors and the trial judge.

"The record here suggests 'a reasonable likelihood' that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted," the judges said in a 31-page decision. "While the law may require us to deny relief in this case, it does not compel us to do so without voicing some concern regarding the process by which the petitioner's conviction was obtained."

A teenage Friedman and his father, Arnold, pleaded guilty in 1988 to molesting 13 children during computer classes in the basement of their home in Great Neck, on Long Island. Jesse Friedman, now 40, was paroled in 2001; his father committed suicide in prison in 1995. The pair were charged with several hundred counts of sex abuse.

Mexico's Supreme Court voted Monday to uphold a Mexico City law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples.

The justices voted 9-2 against challenges presented by federal prosecutors and others who had argued the law fails to protect adoptive children against possible ill effects or discrimination, or to guarantee their rights to a traditional family.

Justices voting with the majority argued that once same-sex marriages had been approved, it would be discriminatory to consider those couples less capable of parental duties than heterosexual couples.

The court voted earlier this month by the same margin to uphold same-sex marriages themselves under a Mexico City law enacted March 4.

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples have married under the law, but city officials have not yet reported any applications by those couples to adopt children.

A judge on Monday ordered the release of a man who spent 13 years behind bars for trying to steal food from a church, his third offense under California's three-strikes law.

Tears streamed down Gregory Taylor's face when Judge Peter Espinoza amended his sentence to eight years already served. The judge asked a bailiff to get him a tissue.

He was taken back into custody and will be released when his paperwork is completed in at least two days.

Family members and supporters applauded and the 47-year-old Taylor quietly thanked the court and his lawyers for "giving me another chance ... and my family for sticking by me."

The Stanford Law Project filed a writ of habeas corpus seeking freedom for Taylor, who was sentenced in 1997 to 25 years to life under California's three-strikes law. The district attorney did not oppose the group's move.

A lawyer for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay says the Justice Department has ended a probe of the Texas Republican and will not file any criminal charges.

The six-year criminal investigation focused on DeLay's ties to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was released from a minimum-security prison camp in June.

One of DeLay's lawyers, Richard Cullen, said Monday the Justice Department's Office of Public Integrity informed DeLay's legal team early last week that it was ending the investigation.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment, which is normally the case when the department ends a criminal probe without filing charges.

Abramoff served about 3 1/2 years in prison for fraud, corruption and conspiracy. He spent three days in a halfway house in Baltimore before he was placed in home confinement. Abramoff currently is working in a kosher pizzeria in northwest Baltimore.

A Northern California appeals court has struck down a shopping mall's policy barring people from approaching strangers to chitchat.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal this week said the rules at Roseville's Westfield Galleria violate the California Constitution's free speech guarantee.

The mall prohibited people in its common areas from approaching people they didn't know to talk unless the conversation was about business involving the mall or its tenants. The case arose after mall officials issued a citizen's arrest of a 27-year-old pastor who tried to talk about his faith.

The appeals court says the policy effectively bars shoppers from chatting about the weather or offering directions.

A spokeswoman for Westfield says the mall is considering appealing to the California Supreme Court.